Patrick does not have a backup car and needed to preserve her primary

February 16, 2018

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Danica Patrick wasn’t pleased with her performance in the Can-Am Duel at Daytona on Thursday night.

The race was the first time she had mixed it up in a restrictor-plate setting since the October event at Talladega Superspeedway, and the 35-year-old did not like the feel of her No. 7 GoDaddy Chevrolet. But despite the 14th-place finish, Patrick avoided an early incident and set a baseline for her team to build on over the weekend.

"It’s just kind of weird, you know," Patrick said. "Make almost no practice laps and then go race. For me, even at the end, I was just playing it safe. We got really lucky that we didn’t get in that first accident.

"Just playing it safe at the end. It was a little too loose to push it. If I pushed it, I might have just spun by myself. That isn’t a very good move."

Danica Patrick let it slip that she will be driving for Ed Carpenter Racing in the 102nd Indianapolis 500 on Wednesday at Media Day for the Daytona 500 at Daytona International Speedway.She was there ...

Even though Patrick took part in a pair of Saturday practice sessions, this was the first time she had cars behind her, and it wasn’t a comfortable sensation.

Fortunately for her, Patrick has been reunited this week with veteran crew chief Tony Eury Jr., who called the shots for her during their NASCAR Xfinity Series tenure at JR Motorsports. He believes most of Patrick’s frustration was over being asked to ride in the back for most of the race.

"She's done a good job," Eury told Autoweek and Kickin’ the Tires. "We told her to run at the back of the pack for most of the night, just stay out of trouble because this is our only bullet. She did what we asked her to do.

"I think she was a little disappointed just because she was last in that lead pack, but overall it was a success. We ran from seventh to 10th most of the night. Now we’ve got three hours to get it tuned up for Daytona, which I don’t think will be a problem. We just (had) to get through tonight."

Even though Patrick and Eury have worked together before, the driver believes she has changed a lot over the past six years.

"Super familiar, but when we worked together before I don’t think my vocabulary was probably quite as big as it is now," Patrick said. "And it definitely was different. I’m pretty sure I was still speaking Indy car, which was 'understeer, oversteer,' not 'push and loose.'

"It’s good to have him on the car, though."

Eury says Danica knows exactly what she needs from a car. That wasn’t the case when she first crossed over from open-wheel racing. And more importantly, he remembers exactly what she doesn’t need.

"I kind of know when it’s loose in she’s not going to drive it," Eury said. "So you’ve definitely to have it to where it’s tight on entry and gives her a lot of comfort there.

"It’s my job to kind of figure out where that’s at, and I’ve got a pretty good idea of what I need to do here. So I think it’ll be a pretty easy fix."

Matt Weaver
- Matt Weaver is an associate motorsports editor at Autoweek. Before becoming a journalist, he was a dirt track racer and short track cheeseburger connoisseur.
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